heykidscomicsfandomcom-20200214-history
Through the Looking-Glass
Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) is a novel by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). It is based on his meeting with another Alice, Alice Raikes. Set some six months later than the earlier book, Alice again enters a fantastical world, this time by climbing through a mirror into the world that she can see beyond it. Though not quite as popular as Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass includes such celebrated verses as "Jabberwocky" and "The Walrus and the Carpenter", and the episode involving Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Plot summary left|thumb|Alice entering the Looking Glass. Illustration by Sir [[wikipedia:John Tenniel|John Tenniel|]] Alice is playing with a white kitten (whom she calls "Snowdrop") and a black kitten (whom she calls "Kitty")—the offspring of Dinah, Alice's cat in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland—when she ponders what the world is like on the other side of a mirror's reflection. Climbing up on the fireplace mantel, she pokes at the wall-hung mirror behind the fireplace and discovers, to her surprise, that she is able to step through it to an alternative world. In this reflected version of her own house, she finds a book with looking-glass poetry, "Jabberwocky", whose reversed printing she can read only by holding it up to the mirror. She also observes that the chess pieces have come to life, though they remain small enough for her to pick up. Upon leaving the house (where it had been a cold, snowy night), she enters a sunny spring garden where the flowers have the power of human speech; they perceive Alice as being a "flower that can move about." Elsewhere in the garden, Alice meets the Red Queen, who is now human-sized, and who impresses Alice with her ability to run at breathtaking speeds. This is a reference to the chess rule that queens are able to move any number of vacant squares at once, in any direction, which makes them the most "agile" of pieces. The Red Queen reveals to Alice that the entire countryside is laid out in squares, like a gigantic chessboard, and offers to make Alice a queen if she can move all the way to the eighth rank/row in a chess match. This is a reference to the chess rule of Promotion. Alice is placed in the second rank as one of the White Queen's pawns, and begins her journey across the chessboard by boarding a train that literally jumps over the third row and directly into the fourth rank, thus acting on the rule that pawns can advance two spaces on their first move. thumb|right|Tenniel illustration of Tweedledum (centre) and Tweedledee (right) and Alice (left). 1871) thumb|Red King snoring, by John Tenniel She then meets the fat twin brothers Tweedledum and Tweedledee, whom she knows from the famous nursery rhyme. After reciting the long poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter", the Tweedles draw Alice's attention to the Red King—loudly snoring away under a nearby tree—and maliciously provoke her with idle philosophical banter that she exists only as an imaginary figure in the Red King's dreams (thereby implying that she will cease to exist the instant he wakes up). Finally, the brothers begin acting out their nursery-rhyme by suiting up for battle, only to be frightened away by an enormous crow, as the nursery rhyme about them predicts. thumb|right|Tenniel illustration of the White Knight. 1871 Alice next meets the White Queen, who is very absent-minded but boasts of (and demonstrates) her ability to remember future events before they have happened. Alice and the White Queen advance into the chessboard's fifth rank by crossing over a brook together, but at the very moment of the crossing, the Queen transforms into a talking Sheep in a small shop. Alice soon finds herself struggling to handle the oars of a small rowboat, where the Sheep annoys her with (seemingly) nonsensical shouting about "crabs" and "feathers". Unknown to Alice, these are standard terms in the jargon of rowing. Thus (for a change) the Queen/Sheep was speaking in a perfectly logical and meaningful way. After crossing yet another brook into the sixth rank, Alice immediately encounters Humpty Dumpty, who, besides celebrating his unbirthday, provides his own translation of the strange terms in "Jabberwocky". In the process, he introduces Alice (and the reader) to the concept of portmanteau words, before his inevitable fall. "All the king's horses and all the king's men" come to Humpty Dumpty's assistance, and are accompanied by the White King, along with the Lion and the Unicorn, who again proceed to act out a nursery rhyme by fighting with each other. In this chapter, the March Hare and Hatter of the first book make a brief re-appearance in the guise of "Anglo-Saxon messengers" called "Haigha" and "Hatta" (i.e. "Hare" and "Hatter"—these names are the only hint given as to their identities other than John Tenniel's illustrations). Upon leaving the Lion and Unicorn to their fight, Alice reaches the seventh rank by crossing another brook into the forested territory of the Red Knight, who is intent on capturing the "white pawn"—who is Alice—until the White Knight comes to her rescue. Escorting her through the forest towards the final brook-crossing, the Knight recites a long poem of his own composition called Haddocks' Eyes, and repeatedly falls off his horse. His clumsiness is a reference to the "eccentric" L-shaped movements of chess knights, and may also be interpreted as a self-deprecating joke about Lewis Carroll's own physical awkwardness and stammering in real life. Bidding farewell to the White Knight, Alice steps across the last brook, and is automatically crowned a queen, with the crown materialising abruptly on her head. She soon finds herself in the company of both the White and Red Queens, who relentlessly confound Alice by using word play to thwart her attempts at logical discussion. They then invite one another to a party that will be hosted by the newly crowned Alice—of which Alice herself had no prior knowledge. Alice arrives and seats herself at her own party, which quickly turns to a chaotic uproar—much like the ending of the first book. Alice finally grabs the Red Queen, believing her to be responsible for all the day's nonsense, and begins shaking her violently with all her might. By thus "capturing" the Red Queen, Alice unknowingly puts the Red King (who has remained stationary throughout the book) into checkmate, and thus is allowed to wake up. Alice suddenly awakes in her armchair to find herself holding the black kitten, whom she deduces to have been the Red Queen all along, with the white kitten having been the White Queen. The story ends with Alice recalling the speculation of the Tweedle brothers, that everything may have, in fact, been a dream of the Red King, and that Alice might herself be no more than a figment of his imagination. One final poem is inserted by the author as a sort of epilogue which suggests that life itself is but a dream. Characters Main characters *Alice *Bandersnatch *Haigha (March Hare) *Hatta (The Hatter) *Humpty Dumpty *The Jabberwock *Jubjub bird *Red King *Red Queen *The Lion and the Unicorn *The Sheep *The Walrus and the Carpenter *Tweedledum and Tweedledee *White King *White Knight *White Queen Minor characters thumb|''The Jabberwock'', as illustrated by [[wikipedia:John Tenniel|John Tenniel for Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, including the poem "Jabberwocky".|]] Returning characters The characters of Hatta and Haigha (pronounced as the English would have said "hatter" and "hare") make an appearance, and are pictured (by Sir John Tenniel, not by Carroll) to resemble their Wonderland counterparts, the Hatter and the March Hare. However, Alice does not recognise them as such. Dinah, Alice's cat, also makes a return – this time with her two kittens; Kitty (the black one) and Snowdrop (the white one). At the end of the book they are associated with the Red Queen and the White Queen respectively in the looking-glass world. Though she does not appear, Alice's sister is mentioned. In both Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, there are puns and quips about two non-existing characters, Nobody and Somebody. Paradoxically, the gnat calls Alice an old friend, though it was never introduced in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Writing style and themes Symbolism Chess thumb|Lewis Carroll's diagram of the story as a chess game Poems and songs thumb|[[wikipedia:The Walrus and the Carpenter|The Walrus and the Carpenter|]] The Wasp in a wig Lewis Carroll decided to suppress a scene involving what was described as "a wasp in a wig" (possibly a play on the commonplace expression "bee in the bonnet"). It has been suggested in a biography by Carroll's nephew, Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, that one of the reasons for this suppression was due to the suggestion of his illustrator, John Tenniel. In a letter to Carroll, dated 1 June 1870, Tenniel wrote: }} For many years no one had any idea what this missing section was or whether it had survived. In 1974, a document purporting to be the galley proofs of the missing section was sold at Sotheby's; the catalogue description read, in part, that "The proofs were bought at the sale of the author's ... personal effects ... Oxford, 1898...". The bid was won by John Fleming, a Manhattan book dealer. The winning bid was £1,700. The contents were subsequently published in Martin Gardner's The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition, and is also available as a hardback book The Wasp in a Wig: A Suppressed Episode ....(Clarkson Potter, MacMillan & Co.; 1977) The rediscovered section describes Alice's encounter with a wasp wearing a yellow wig, and includes a full previously unpublished poem. If included in the book, it would have followed, or been included at the end of, chapter 8 – the chapter featuring the encounter with the White Knight. The discovery is generally accepted as genuine, but the proofs have yet to receive any physical examination to establish age and authenticity. Dramatic adaptations The book has been adapted several times, in combination with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and as a stand-alone film or television special. Stand-alone versions With Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Other The 1977 film Jabberwocky expands the story of the poem "Jabberwocky". The 1936 Mickey Mouse short film "Thru the Mirror" has Mickey travel through his mirror and into a bizarre world. The 1959 film Donald in Mathmagic Land includes a segment with Donald Duck dressed as Alice meeting the Red Queen on a chessboard. See also References Notes Citations Other sources * * * External links *A catalogue of illustrated editions of the Alice books from 1899 to 2009 ;Online texts * HTML version with commentary of Sabian religion *[http://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/alice4.html Text of A Wasp in a Wig] *c1917 edition from archive.org – scanned for download or reading online *Multiple Formats ( html, XML, opendocument ODF, pdf (landscape, portrait), plaintext, concordance ) SiSU Category:Alice in Wonderland Category:Novels about chess Category:Children's fantasy novels Category:British children's novels Category:Literature featuring anthropomorphic characters Category:Macmillan Publishers books Category:Sequel novels Category:Works by Lewis Carroll Category:19th-century novels Category:1870s fantasy novels Category:1871 novels Category:British novels adapted into films